Collierville, TN - 1/29/2011

The weather warmed up nicely for Saturday, so I was excited to do some caching with my buddy jbgreer. We met up around 8am and had a nice breakfast at my favorite restaurant to discuss the day's agenda. While at the restaurant, jbgreer presented me with a 3000 finds geo-achievement geocoin. That was so cool! I was meaning to get myself one but never got around to it.

The plan for the day was to hunt two of Bitbrain's puzzle caches in Collierville, TN, and then drive north to W.C. Johnson Park, where we would hunt 5 relatively new peanutpapa caches in the southern part of the Wolf River Wildlife Corridor.

The first cache we hunted was By Request by bitbrain (GC1XHPH). This turned out to be a two-stage cache. The first stage was tricky and fairly unique in my experience. After mapping the coordinates for stage 2, we decided to hunt Uncle Albert by bitbrain (GC25VCP) first. This cache had an interesting puzzle that was a variation of one I had solved in Oregon one summer. I had mapped the spot beforehand and so it should have been an easy find. The spot turned out to be busier than I had anticipated, but during a lull, we retrieved the cache and signed the log. Having made our first find of the day, we went to find stage 2 of By Request.

[ non-spoiler picture for "By Request" ]

I really enjoyed these two caches, and made a point to "favorite" them when I logged them on-line. I can't really say anymore about them, in order not to spoil the caches for any future cachers.

We arrived at parking in W.C. Johnson Park sometime around 10:30am. We took the boardwalk north to the point where we needed to head out into the woods. Our last trip to this park was during the previous November. In fact, these five caches were placed right after we found the last ones in the area. This experience would prove to be different largely due to the swampy area these caches were in. I was prepared with my rubber boots. They were needed. The trails were muddy and the swamps were beginning to fill up with water.

The five caches formed a circle, and we hunted them in clockwise order. The first cache we found was Slough Cache East by peanutpapa (GC2KHYH). When we signed the log, we noticed that at least two other cachers had found it (and the others nearby) that day. We never ran into them, but later I learned that they had been there just an hour or so before us.

All of the caches were easy finds, once you got to the general area. None were hidden, I think in part because of their isolation in this part of the woods. It would be hard to say if any non-geocacher ever hikes around in this area.

The last of the five caches in the area was A Field in the Woods by peanutpapa (GC2KHY9). Upon our arrival at the area of the cache, I spotted a possum in a tree. I took a lot of pictures trying to make sure I got at least one good one. The possum was very patient. ;-)

After signing the log, it was only a short hike back to the boardwalk.

We got back to the truck around 12:40, and jbgreer was interested in going after one more cache. He suggested Phillip Duffy Tolerates A Crazy Transient by Phillip Duffy and itcomagic (adopted by Tinksdad) (GC19QK3), which would have been roughly on the road back to Memphis, but I wanted to hunt Cotton Farm Truck Cache by peanutpapa (GC26MN4). I was interested in this cache because I liked the park, but I also knew that the Diff/Terrain combination would fill a spot on jbgreer's D/T matrix.

We drove to what I thought would be the best parking area and started out on a hike. At on point, we got to within .23 miles of the cache by following the main trail. Instead of cutting through the woods, we continued along the main trail looking for a trail/road that would take us north and then east. We eventually found this route, but it turned out to involve much more walking than I had anticipated - nearly a mile more. Once we arrived in the vicinity of the cache, I found the one spot where the water was higher than my boots. Jbgreer saw the truck mentioned on the cache page and instinctively went toward it. I followed my GPSr in another direction and found the cache. This was the neatest cache spot we found on this day. The cool water felt good on my sore feet.

[ A long muddy walk ]

[ Anyone home? ]

[ How convenient...]

[ deep water ]

[ I almost forgot to take a picture of the truck ]

At this point, we were both pretty tired, so we took the most direct route back to the truck, which turned out not to be bad at all. In fact, at one point we saw the trail we should have taken in. Getting back to the truck, it was all I could do to get my boots off and into a clean change of socks and shoes. That was the end of our day. My feet always hurt after wearing those boots.